History for Chron

Attorneys began selecting jurors for the trial of a Spokane jeweler who planned to use the defense of temporary insanity, for the shooting of a bank president at noon on May 10 on Riverside Avenue.

Phineas Saffron, the jeweler, was charged with first-degree assault after the shooting of R. Lewis Rutter, who was the president of the Spokane and Eastern Trust Company.

Rutter survived the shooting, committed with a revolver, and he would later be honored with the naming of Rutter Parkway.

Prosecutor Charles Leavy did not tell the jurors about a motive for the shooting, only that Saffron is “accused of unlawfully and feloniously assaulting” Rutter with the gunfire.

Joe Nichols, of Nine Mile Falls, pleaded guilty to manufacturing liquor in a “huge” distillery near his home.

Federal agents raided Nichols’ property and arrested him and two other men in what was described as “one of the best equipped stills ever seized in Spokane” County.

Nichols was sentenced to serve six months in the county jail and a $1,000 fine.

“Crazed by moonshine whiskey,” a Mica Peak man was arrested after he reportedly tried to stab his wife.

The woman, however, escaped the attack by butcher knife by outrunning her pursuing husband a half mile up the mountain, Spokane County Deputy McEwen reported.

Deputies, with an assist from the Washington State Patrol, arrested Joe Marlow for the reported attack on his wife.

“When I first (saw) Marlow, he was gulping moonshine from a bottle,” McEwen said. Upon “seeing me, he put down the bottle and started after me.

“We finally quieted him and took him into the house.”“Before we got him in the car, however, he tried to tried to assault” the state trooper.

Marlow was then housed in the same jail as his son, Everett Marlow, who was jailed after he was charged with first-degree assault in an unrelated incident.